Since January, about 110 students originally from Haiti have enrolled in Albertville City Schools, 65 of them entering the system since June.
The north Alabama school system of about 5,800 students is familiar with immigrant populations. About 65% of the student body is Hispanic, many families drawn to the area to work in the poultry industry.
However, the recent enrollment of students from Haiti is a tangible marker of federal immigration policy changes. Local officials attribute the influx to the refugee status and federal assistance for which Haitians can now qualify.
Albertville Superintendent Bart Reeves said the system welcomes and will educate all students. But students from other countries require additional resources.
“It’s complicated,” Reeves told Alabama Daily News recently. “When kids get here, we want to educate them to the best of our ability and give them a first-class education. And we’ll keep doing that. But we need help. I cannot emphasize that enough.”
Haitian Creole is the official language in Haiti.
“We do have some translators, but certainly not the number we need,” Reeves said. “So that’s challenging.”
Earlier this month, there were news reports about Albertville residents’ and officials’ concerns about charter buses dropping off immigrants in Albertville.
Those buses were chartered by Pilgrim’s Pride, a poultry processor with multiple facilities in north Alabama. Its expanded Russellville plant needed additional employees and was busing workers from Marshall County.
State Rep. Brock Colvin, R-Albertville, said chicken processors in north Alabama have long used vans to transport workers. But the recent use of charter buses raised false concerns about immigrants being bused in from out of state.
“The buses made everyone question everything, but we learned that was just industry taking people to work,” Colvin told ADN.
“But there has been an increase in population. There is no doubt about that. Until the federal government or the White House changes its stance on immigration, we’re going to continue to deal with this issue and we can only do so much.”
Other parts of the state are seeing similar immigration influxes. North of Marshall County in Congressional District 5, U.S. Rep. Dale Strong, R-Huntsville, last week wrote a letter questioning immigration policies to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Communities in my district, like Athens, Alabama, are facing an influx of migrants who are overwhelming public resources and utilizing critical bed space in our regional emergency rooms,” Strong said.
According to Strong’s office, two million people have immigrated to the U.S. under programs pertaining to Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The Washington Post in June reported that more than half a million Haitians, including many immigrants without legal status in the United States, will be shielded from deportation through Feb. 3, 2026, as part of the Biden administration’s expansion of the use of its executive powers to aid immigrants.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has granted protection to eligible Haitians already in the United States after a 2010 earthquake killed thousands of people there, the Post reported. Biden administration officials have gradually added more recent arrivals as security crises in Haiti have worsened.
Information specific to immigration into Alabama was not available last week from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The office does outline on its website some of the resources available to Cuban and Haitian immigrants, including job location assistance, Supplemental Social Security Income and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
“This area has always had immigration coming in, but it just seems like over the past month or two, it has rapidly increased and I think part of that is from these programs that we’ve seen that are incentivizing people to move in,” said state Sen. Wes Kitchens, R-Arab.
“… My biggest concerns are a large number of people coming in in a short amount of time and being able to sustain the services that we need, from schools and then law enforcement and first responders.”
Both Colvin and Kitchens said one of the concerns they’ve heard is landlords renting single-family homes to multiple families.
“We already have an affordable housing shortage,” Colvin said.
Meanwhile, new homes and property tax revenue would help the local school system keep up with growing enrollment, Reeves said.
Kitchens said he’d also like assurance that new residents are working, not simply surviving off of federal benefits.
A recent job fair announcement said Pilgrim’s pay starts at $17.50 per hour and $19.50 for night-shift workers. Benefits include medical, dental, vision and life insurance, paid time off and community college tuition and transportation to and from work.
Poultry processing isn’t easy work and Alabama Department of Agriculture and Labor Commissioner Rick Pate has advocated for a viable guest worker program for ag-related industries.
“I don’t fault Pilgrim’s,” Pate said. “When I travel all over the state, rural areas and urban, there are some jobs that are just so difficult, it’s not that they’re underpaid, it’s just that Americans don’t want them and I don’t blame them.”
“(Poultry plants) are following the law and I don’t think they’re taking many American jobs,” Pate said.
In 2022, Marshall County had a labor force rate of 56.7%, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. In Franklin County, where Russellville is located, about 56.1%% of working-age people were in the workforce.
Colvin said he’s frustrated with the White House giving away federal benefits, “but that doesn’t give anyone the right to treat somebody as less than or be racist or hateful.”
“We can discuss policy changes without hating somebody,” Colvin said.
Kitchens said local, state and federal elected officials will have to work together to address immigration influxes.
“This Haitian population, they are coming here legally,” Kitchens said. “And we do know there are illegal immigrants coming in and that is a problem, a totally different conversation.”
Kitchens said he, Colvin, Rep. Jeana Ross, R-Guntersville, and Marshall County Sheriff Phil Sims will visit some communities in Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border next month to see how they’ve responded to increased immigration.
“We’re going to talk about some of the legislation and policies they’ve done,” Kitchens.
Reeves praised lawmakers’ recent efforts and funding for an auxiliary teacher grant program in K-2 classrooms in underperforming schools and those with a high English language learners population. That’s helped his district get more educators in some of the lower grades, he said. There’s about $5.4 million for that program in the state’s 2025 education budget.
The district does get additional funds to educate English Language Learners, those students entering school not fluent in English. About 35% of Albertville’s student body is ELL. Most of it comes from the state, Reeves said, though it’s federal policies that lead to increases in immigrants.
Last year, the state contributed about $488 for every ELL student. The feds contributed $89 per student.
“That’s very disappointing,” Reeves said. “Right or wrong or indifferent, (the federal government) is responsible for this and we need more federal help.”
In the state’s 2025 education budget, there is $18.5 million for the English Language Learners Program.
Despite frustrations, Reeves is quick to praise the system’s teachers and students.
“I don’t know the answers, but I know we’ve got great educators in this school system who do a wonderful job every day educating these kids,” Reeves said.
“… Our kids are great, behavior wise,” he said. “(Kindergarten) through 12th grade, we have wonderful kids. You look at our student incident reports, they’re very low every year because our kids are very well behaved.”